Friday, November 27, 2009

A rare treat to see Melanie "Wrong But With Conviction" Phillips give this old classic a spin on Question Time last night. It received its first outing way back in President Bush's first State of the Union address to Congress after the Iraq invasion. Just for a few seconds he appeared to have a huge revelation up his sleeve that was about to turn the media narrative completely on its head - "already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction..." Really? No, not really. Sadly for Bush, he hadn't finished his sentence, with the remaining words being "related programme activities". Which begged the obvious question - what exactly is a weapon of mass destruction related programme activity, and how precisely does it differ from an actual weapon?

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The third in the new series of UK-wide polls conducted by the Canadian firm Angus Reid Strategies for PoliticalBetting.com continues to show remarkable stability in its Scottish subsample. Labour has extended its lead over the SNP from five to eight points, although that still falls well short of the fifteen-point Labour lead for Westminster seen in yesterday's full-scale Scottish poll for the Telegraph. Here are the full figures -Labour 33% (+1)SNP 25% (-2)Conservatives 18% (-2)Liberal Democrats 16% (+5)Others 8% (-)

On one point these figures are in absolute agreement with the Telegraph poll - in placing the Conservatives on a dismal 18%. The spectre of a majority Conservative government taking power with perhaps as few as one or two seats in Scotland - which many people in their heart of hearts thought was impossible - appears to be moving a little closer with every passing week.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Mike Smithson of PoliticalBetting.com is a Liberal Democrat, albeit one who's never been (to put it mildly) slavishly loyal to the leadership, so his views on developments within his own party are always particularly interesting to read. One point that he's made repeatedly over recent months, and returned to in his latest post, is that it would be logically inconsistent for a party that believes in proportional representation to consider doing a deal with a party that has won the most seats in an election, despite having been defeated in the popular vote. (The speculation is that Labour could conceivably find itself in such a situation shortly, if the latest Ipsos-Mori poll is not a blip.)

I have to say that strikes me as an astonishingly misguided interpretation on more than one count. Firstly, I'm wondering if Mike has fully taken on board what PR actually means in practice. As a Lib Dem it would seem odd if he hasn't, but my vague impression is that his own allegiance to the party has little to do with any great interest in electoral reform. Internationally, PR systems quite routinely result in coalitions that exclude the party that has won the most seats, let alone the most votes. So, even if they wanted to be seen to be adhering to "best PR practice", there would be nothing hypocritical about the Liberal Democrats keeping all options open.

But the more salient point surely is that the job of a party that believes in PR is not to eccentrically go around acting as if PR is already in operation when it isn't (is Mike saying to the Lib Dems in Ghandian terms "you must be the change you want to see"?), but instead to take every opportunity to actually bring PR about. That might well involve a deal with a Labour party that had lost the popular vote, because the chances of the Tories making the slightest concession on electoral reform in the next parliament are literally nil. If the current generation of Lib Dems turn down a golden opportunity to finally bring about a fair voting system, and indeed to hold a share of power on a regular basis from that point on, how on earth will they justify it to their successors twenty years from now? "We had to turn down proportional representation, because it was far more important for us to act proportionately". Yes, that'll sound good. It's the philosophy of a pious, self-denying, proportionality-worshipping monk, not of a serious political party.

In truth, if Labour are the largest single party in the next parliament without the mandate of the popular vote, that situation will have been directly brought about by politicians - to a large extent Tory politicians - who have stubbornly insisted on maintaining the rotten first-past-the-post electoral system all of these last few decades. It's not the responsibility of the Liberal Democrats (or of the SNP and Plaid Cymru for that matter) to artificially create a lead in seats for the Tories, when the very electoral system the Tories are determined to uphold has failed to deliver that lead for them. Mike Smithson is putting the onus on the wrong players - if the Conservatives think the electoral system has thrown up a result that does not accurately reflect the popular will, it's up to them to accept changes to that system. Otherwise, they ought in conscience to be prepared to just lump it.